


Adventures in Plainclothes Surveillance

by Sixthlight



Series: It Takes A Police Officer [1]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Multi, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:54:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11391039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: DS Peter Grant, seconded to Organised Crime, is sent to keep an eye on two persons of interest. Questions are asked. Answers are mostly ignored.





	Adventures in Plainclothes Surveillance

**Author's Note:**

> mardia made a comment on Twitter referring to a fic she’s writing as “the one where Beverley and Nightingale are pet sociopaths”, and I went “WHAT” and also “terrifyingly, I kind of see where you’re coming from there” and then, inevitably, “fuck it I’m writing this”. So, um, here we all are. I’m so sorry. I think this is a reaction to all the kidfic.

I can’t really say I was undercover at the party, because I’m plainclothes anyway and it’s not like the people I was expecting to find didn’t know what I look like. On the other hand, I wasn’t introducing myself as Detective Sergeant Peter Grant of the Met’s Fraud division, lately seconded to Organised Crime: I was introducing myself as Peter Grant, student of architecture. Which was true, as long as your definition of student extends beyond ‘enrolled at an educational institution’.

The best cover stories are the ones you don’t have to lie about, after all.

Anyway, my plan was mostly to stay low and see what Thomas Nightingale and Beverley Thames got up to and who they talked with. Organised Crime seems like a very old-fashioned sort of unit to a lot of people, but it’s a very modern problem, and just like in the old days, the problem isn’t that we don’t know who the people we’re looking for _are_. Mostly we know that. The problem is finding something to convict them of that isn’t tax evasion. I mean, we _can_ convict them for that, some of the time, but we like to have standards.

Beverley’s mother ran, quite allegedly, one of the biggest counterfeiting rings in the UK, and they’d recently run into a territorial dispute with a more agriculturally-focused group further up the Thames Valley. (You’d be surprised how much money there is in some agricultural products, especially the leafy, green, and legal-only-in-Amsterdam kind – but what the higher-ups were _really_ worried about was the fertiliser. You can level buildings with fertiliser. Not that we had any reason to suspect connections to terrorism, was my opinion, but speculating about it does keep the funding going, was my highly cynical and unspoken thought.) From our perspective if they’d kept each other entertained it would have done us a favour, as long as we weren’t fishing the bodies of innocent bystanders out of the Thames – well, any bodies, really, bodies are fundamentally depressing – but lately a détente seemed to have broken out, and that was concerning. What was even more concerning was the word, from an informant called Zach Palmer who I trust as far as I can throw London Bridge – I say that because I could probably toss Zach a metre or two if I stopped and worked out the physics first – that the Nightingale, first name Thomas, was somehow involved. His past was murky and his current associations unclear, after a career that had officially started at the Foreign Office and then gone sideways somewhere, but we were reasonably certain he’d belonged to an agency with a number in its three-letter-acronym. They, of course, weren’t talking.

“Oooh, kind of like James Bond,” Sahra Guleed had said, looking at the file.

“If James Bond were real he’d be a sodding psychopath,” DCI Seawoll had growled, “and this bugger probably is too.”

Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a fight with Nightingale – I’d lose, unless I had a sniper rifle from a few hundred metres, and then I’d need a sniper to go with it. I’ve only ever trained with handguns, mostly in how not to kill myself with them, and I don’t like them either. Any time guns get involved, something’s about to go wrong. I’m police, so when things go wrong, it’s always my problem.

Currently, I was eyeing Nightingale from across the room while trying to look interested in a display about a planned apartment building. He was looking very dashing in a tux that had definitely been fitted for him, not off-the-shelf. He was innocuously good-looking in a standard sort of white-guy way, not eye-catchingly handsome, but to my eye there was still an air of danger about him that made him stand out. That was probably the very thick file I’d read.  

If you were standing here watching him and were also very stupid you would assume that the woman on his arm was decorative, but there was nothing decorative about Beverley Thames – well, she _was_ eye-catchingly beautiful, with her relaxed hair piled in a sleek bun and an off-the-shoulder dress in a deep sapphire that brought out almost blue highlights in her dark skin and hair. But she was only wearing two-inch heels, nice solid ones too and not stilettos, the kind of thing you could move in if you had to, and her legs were all muscle. She’d had a shot at swimming for the UK in the Olympics when she was younger, according to her file, or she would have if the family business hadn’t been crime. Speaking of the terrorism thing, there _was_ some suggestion she’d been involved in burning a couple of Monsanto cornfields earlier in the year, in cahoots with the upstream Thames boys. There didn’t seem to be any profit in it, per se; old forest had been cleared for the planting, the conservation permits greased through with corporate money, and it had practically been an act of charity. Or eco-terrorism. One of those. Nobody involved had wanted to say anything bad about her, even the neighbouring farmers whose own fields had nearly caught; she was good at making people like her.

I’d tailed both Nightingale and Beverley more than once, and met Beverley face-to-face for a minute several months ago, so there was an even chance either or both would recognise me. If they had a name for my face and they hadn’t looked up what I did for a living, they were much stupider than I thought they were. We knew, our little group, that there were leaks in the Met. My money – discussed only with Sahra and only once – was actually on a certain Assistant Commissioner, who was rumoured to have social ties to Lady Ty, Beverley’s elder sister and her mother’s right-hand woman. Children at the same school, that sort of thing. But that’s the kind of accusation you can’t make, not if you want to have a career. Not if you want to have a _life_ , possibly. Only just possibly. This isn’t the cheap thriller version of London, or even the seventies.

Is what I told myself on a regular basis, whenever that sort of thought crossed my mind. As it was when Beverley Thames turned her head and caught my eye. I made to look away, like I hadn’t made eye contact, but she smiled at me, happy and direct and dangerous.

Shit. I wasn’t in physical danger, almost certainly, but I’d been made. No point hiding; I smiled in what I hoped was friendly puzzlement back, hoping that the glasses I didn’t need and turtleneck jumper I’d borrowed off one of my cousins would confuse her. She tugged on Nightingale’s arm, and he turned his head and saw me too; when he did, he gave me the tiniest nod, a smile flickering at the corner of his lips, too, as if we were acquaintances.

Which we were, of a weird sort, I supposed. _Shit_. There went the evening. They weren’t going to talk to anybody I wanted to know about now, and they’d know we were following them specifically. I couldn’t have fucked it up more if I’d tried to arrest them on the spot.

This is why I hate undercover work.

I nodded back, like I wasn’t sure quite who they were but thought I might know them, like maybe I was there for somebody else and not them, and turned away. The important thing to do now was to call in – we’d planned for this contingency but the plan had included a check-in, you know, just in case. Just in case they did decide to do something stupid.

They wouldn’t, because I was a cop and they almost certainly knew it and neither of them or any of their associates had ever come close to killing a police officer – that was not a strategy for long-term domination of London’s criminal underworld, because it got you far too much focused attention. But it wasn’t something I wanted to test.

I made my way through the crowd with an absent but focused expression that hopefully said I was a man in search of certain facilities, and reinforced it by asking one of the waitstaff for directions. I knew where the men’s loo was, but what I actually wanted was the door next to it. I’d checked earlier and was pretty certain led to a cleaning closet; I was good at recognising those from when I’d helped Mum at work, when I was young. I’d pop in there where I wouldn’t be disturbed or overheard, make my call, and then do whatever Stephanopoulos wanted me to do next. I expected it was going to be ‘hang around and make it difficult for them to talk to people without you seeing it’, but you never knew. New information might have come in.

I realised the first mistake I’d made when I opened the door, after checking I hadn’t been followed, and finding it wasn’t a closet. It was a small room that was obviously used to store the round tables and armless chairs set out in the main room for people to sit and talk at. The few left, stripped of the fine tablecloths and chair covers, were prosaic metal and plastic, with only faux-velvet seats and backs on the chairs to lend any air of luxury. There was another door on the far side of the room, presumably to the part of the events centre that wasn’t in use this evening.

Never mind; I could still make a call in here safely enough – the tables and chairs were barely being used, they wouldn’t be coming back for more. And then, when I stepped in and turned around to shut the door behind me, I realised my _second_ mistake, because Beverley Thames was right there shutting it for me.

Up close she was looking even better this evening than she had at a distance. She had a wide gold necklace of intricate curlicues and swirls that framed the base of her neck, and a very fine sheen of sweat from the heat of the crowded room. I will fully admit my eyes tracked down to the swell of her cleavage, but this was mostly because I was trying to assess if she had any weapons – there was nothing visibly out of place - and I looked up again right away.

“Hello, Peter,” she said, sounding amused. “Enjoying the party?”

“I’ve been to better,” I said. “One of the violins in the string quartet isn’t tuned properly and I’m pretty sure that’s not the good champagne. But I don’t think - have we met?”

“The things you have to do for your job,” she agreed. I’d backed away a step or two for clearance and she’d followed; I was thinking of the door on the other side of the room, but I wasn’t thinking hard enough, because I backed right into Thomas Nightingale, who had, of course, circled around and come through it.

I needed to get out of there right now; cornering me out of sight of the rest of the party was not a friendly strategy. I rebounded off Nightingale, but he put a hand on my shoulder – not tight, just as if to ask me to pause – and I waited for the prick of a blade or the cold metal of a gun barrel, but there wasn’t anything else.

“You can relax,” he said from behind and just below my ear; he’s maybe an inch shorter than me. He put his other hand on my other shoulder, so at least I knew he wasn’t holding a weapon, although that might not make much difference. “We’re not planning anything hazardous to your health.”

“He’s not even armed,” said Beverley encouragingly.

“You know,” I said, “any conversation where that has to be specified is not a conversation I feel comfortable with. Call me picky.”

“Come on,” she said. “We know who you are. You’re Detective Sergeant Peter Grant, in the Fraud unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, you’ve been seconded to Organised Crime for six months now, and you’re here to keep an eye on who we talk to.”

“It’s flattering you’ve been paying attention,” I said, “but who are you two that I’d have any interest in keeping an eye on you? Feel free to get into detail.”

Beverley smiled and stepped in closer, brushing at my turtleneck like I had cat hair on the front of it or something. I did not look down. If I’d looked down I might have invited her to notice my reaction to all of this near-bodily contact, which was highly embarrassing, firstly because I’m a professional and secondly because the imminent prospect of danger ranging from a common-or-garden beating to being a body in the Thames is _not_ something that gets me going. It’s really, really not. That was all Beverley.

Oh, fine. It was both of them.

“You know perfectly well who we are,” said Nightingale, practically in my ear, the bastard. I told myself it was definitely intimidating and slightly creepy. “I’m Thomas and she’s Beverley.”

“I wasn’t aware we were on first-name terms,” I said.

“I’ve seen the files you’ve got,” Beverley added. “Honestly, you could be trying a bit harder. There’s loads of stuff you haven’t even bothered writing down. Or maybe you don’t know about it, which is just embarrassing for you.”

“Assuming it’s the case that I have any reason to have files on you, or to have read them,” I said, “why are you letting me know that you have a source in my unit if this _doesn’t_ end with, how did you put it, things hazardous to my health?”

Beverley shrugged. The motion did interesting things to her cleavage. I wasn’t looking, and I didn’t swallow. “You knew that already too – of course, our source doesn’t know you know, but between you and me they’re not very bright.”

“And, what, you’re auditioning a replacement?”

“Well, that’s a thought,” said Nightingale as if he was actually considering this, “but I don’t think either of us could have any confidence you’d carry through on it the moment you got out of this room.”

I thought: _unless you threatened people I care about, which if you know who I am you could, and I bet that’s the next thing out of your mouth_ , _it would really help my ability to focus if it was,_ but I didn’t say any of it because I’m not _stupid_.

“We thought we’d just have a chat,” said Beverley. “You’re a bit distractible, and it’s hard to get your full attention.” She frowned at me. “I left London for a whole two months over the summer and I’m not sure you even noticed.”

“Oh, he definitely noticed when you left – he just lost attention once you were gone,” said Nightingale helpfully.

This is another thing you learn about when you join the police – criminals can get fixated on you, think you have some sort of special relationship. There’s a bunch of psychological guff about why but the important thing is that it’s a bad sign, because it means that even if you leave the case, or maybe _especially_ if you leave the case, you’re no longer a faceless agent of the law – you’re a target.

Some of that must have shown in my face, because Beverley patted my cheek, and Nightingale’s hand tightened briefly on my shoulder. “Really, it’s all right. You’re always thinking about twenty things at once – we haven’t given you any reason to keep your attention. I thought it might be fun to fix that.”

It didn’t actually come as any sort of _surprise_ that the next thing she did was give my now painfully hard cock a squeeze through my trousers. I bit my lip to not make a noise. I was really not taking control of this situation.

“Please don’t do that,” I said. Contrary to popular rumour, the human body contains more than enough blood to support even quite strenuous brain activity _and_ maintain an erection. If you’re trying to digest food as well you’re probably out of luck, but I hadn’t had a chance to eat more than a hors d’oeuvre or two, so I was fine. And I was on an undercover job, and my cover was blown, and the illegally sexy targets of my investigation were possibly trying to seduce me, and also contrary to fictional depictions of police investigations, just going along with it would not be considered an inspired investigative strategy by my superiors.

“Okay,” said Beverley, and stepped back.

She swears, by the way, that to this day she has never seen a greater look of disappointment on my face. Thomas wasn’t in a position to see my face at the time, but swears the back of my head looked disappointed as well. I really want to believe that’s not true, but I think it might be.

“What?” Beverley raised her eyebrows at me. “You told me to stop.”

“Right,” I said. “Yes. I did that.”

“You don’t really strike me as the kind of person who enjoys that sort of game,” said Nightingale, “but in any case, I feel it’s the sort of thing you have to know someone a bit better before engaging in.”

“I think you’re wrong about the first part, but agreed on the second,” said Beverley. She moved a little bit closer again. Nightingale had never really gone anywhere; he was only touching my shoulders, but I could feel the warmth of him up and down my back. I was _this close_ to accidentally-on-purpose moving back and finding out if he was hard, too, but that really would have been capitulation.

And I was on the job – I still needed to make that phone call. Even more so, now.

“How about this,” Beverley said. “You let me touch you, and we’ll answer any questions you like until I’m done.”

“What constitutes ‘done’?” I asked, stupidly, because I was still processing the first half of that sentence.

They both snorted.

“Okay, fine, I get it,” I said. “I’m not seeing what’s in this for you. Or for me, actually – no, don’t give me that look, I’m a fan of getting off but I have a working right hand, and I have no guarantee you’ll answer any of my questions _truthfully_.”

Nightingale tightened his grip slightly. “We won’t promise full answers, but anything we _do_ say will be true.”

“And what’s in it for _you_ ,” I said again.

“We like to live dangerously,” said Beverley, and her hand hovered so close to my belt buckle I could feel the heat of it through the cloth of my trousers. My cock twitched, treacherously.

I did what I still count as the single most dumb thing in my entire life – to date, there’s still time to improve on it – and said “Whenever you’re ready, then.”

I drew in a breath when the cool air of the room touched me, and then a much longer one when Beverley finally did. I was already starting to leak, and she didn’t give me a proper stroke, just used her thumb to spread the moisture around my head. I groaned.

“Whenever _you’re_ ready,” said Nightingale, right in my ear. I still hadn’t got a good look at him up close this evening.

“Fuck.” This had been a terrible plan ten seconds ago and it wasn’t getting any better.

Beverley wrapped her warm palm around me and gave me one long, beautiful stroke. “Don’t get distracted.”

“Okay, one, fuck you,” I said, “and two, why are the two of you here tonight? I mean, why _specifically_ you two, together. You don’t have a lot in common that I’m aware of.”

I’d surprised them, or at least Beverley; her eyebrows went up and her hand paused. “That’s your first question?”

Focusing on that, on her surprise, helped me – well. Focus.

“Yeah,” I said. “So what’s your truthful, if not necessarily complete answer?”

“We have complementary skill sets and we get on,” said Nightingale. He slid his hands down so he now had me by the upper arm on each side; I couldn’t move my arms forward without breaking his grip. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – I wanted to touch Beverley so badly my hands itched, but then I was _really_ going to get distracted. More distracted.

“By complementary skill sets you mean that you’re good at breaking into places and hitting people and she’s good at charming them,” I said.

“I’m pretty good at breaking into places, actually,” said Beverley, dipping her hand down to glide her fingertips around my balls. “But more or less.”

“Interesting,” I managed through gritted teeth – not in pain. “Are you sleeping together?”

Nightingale made a sort of muffled choking noise and Beverley stopped what she was doing altogether to really glare at me.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” I said. “It’s an obvious question.”

“Obvious to you, maybe!” Beverley said, and jerked me once in revenge; my knees may have bent very slightly. “No.”

“Hngh - seriously?”

“Seriously.” Nightingale had recovered enough to sound amused.

“Hmmm,” I said, but that was actually a useful piece of information, if it was true; understanding organised crime is as much about understanding the relationships that underpin it as anything else. “Okay. What’s your interest in this development?”

“I have no personal interest in it,” Nightingale said promptly, rubbing his thumbs in wide circles on my arms; it was bloody distracting. Like Beverley pulling me off wasn’t.

“Me either,” said Beverley. This time she stopped to run her thumb around the head again. I was really leaking now, and it made it better – worse – one of those.

“What’s – uh – what’s Beverley’s mother’s interest in it?” I tried, and then had to close my eyes as Beverley gave me another long stroke; my hips were starting to move now, entirely involuntarily.

“She didn’t tell me,” said Beverley. “Or you, Thomas, I think.”

“No,” Nightingale agreed.

“What did she tell you, then,” I tried to say, but the last part came out in a gasp.

“Sorry, what was that?” asked Beverley, and started up a slow rhythm, not stopping to play around anymore.

I leaned my head back on Nightingale’s shoulder and shifted my feet so I was standing properly. I could feel his lips brushing the back of my head. I let out a long, slow breath, promised myself I could let go and enjoy this in just a minute, _just a minute,_ because God knew I wasn’t going to get to enjoy it again, and lifted my head to look Beverley in the eye.

“You were asked to come here tonight and talk to people,” I said. “What were you told to ask about and who were you told to talk to?”

“Wow, you _can_ concentrate if you want to,” said Beverley, and sped up.

“Still waiting,” I managed to say.

“We were asked to keep an eye on who was interested in the development that shouldn’t be, based on the public records,” said Nightingale, or I think he did because it really was getting hard to concentrate now, and also not to try and grab at one or both of them.

I think I said “Huh, that sounds like what _I_ was told to do,” except that would have been exceptionally dumb and I’m not sure I was capable of coherent speech just then. Beverley had got close enough to wrap one warm leg around mine, and Nightingale was resting his chin on my shoulder like he was watching – oh _Christ_ okay –

“Is that it?” Beverley demanded.

“Are you trying,” I said, one word at a time, “to distract me from something happening somewhere else right now?”

“We wouldn’t be trying, we’d be _succeeding_ ,” she said, and I was so bloody close.

“Good idea for another time,” said Nightingale. “But no.”

“Are you expecting me to let you both go?”

Beverley was close enough now I could rest a hand on her side even with my arms held back, so I did; it just made me want to put my hands all over her, find out if she was getting off on this. I thought she was. I thought both of them were. I mean, why even do this if you weren’t.

“You’re here by yourself,” said Beverley, not letting up even slightly now, “and anyway, what were you planning to arrest us for?”

“Um,” I said, searching for a good joke about trying to bribe an officer, but all the relevant acts and sections had escaped my brain. “Fine. Was this _seriously_ your plan?”

I gasped that out, one last pointless question, and then that was it; I squeezed my eyes shut and came so hard I’m surprised I stayed standing, although then again I had help. Nightingale was holding on so tight I might have bruises on my arms the next day. Beverley held me lightly in the immediate aftermath and I shivered in half-painful, half-pleasant reaction when she pulled her hand away. She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

I was simultaneously hideously aware of the stacked chairs on the wall behind her, the dreary backstage nature of the room we were in, the sheer idiocy of what I’d just let happen, and feeling better than I had in quite some time. Arousal doesn’t make you stupid, you see. _Orgasms_ make you stupid.

“Oh, bollocks,” said Beverley, looking at her dripping hand. “No, that was not in the plan.”

“Here,” said Nightingale, who’d let go of me and stepped back, and quite prosaically handed her a handkerchief.

“That’s weirdly reassuring,” I said.

“Mmm, if this had been a proper plan I would have stopped by the loo and picked up a condom,” she said, smiling angelically at me, and I might have choked a little bit while doing up my trousers.

“I’m still not sure how this is helping you find out who’s interested in the development,” I said. They exchanged a flicker of a glance I couldn’t read. Beverley bit her lip, but all she said was “Question time’s over for now.”

There was still a lot of tension in the room, a combination of the distinct smell of sex and something that might be two aroused people who _hadn’t_ got theirs, although actually humans don’t have pheromones or anything like that so that was all in my head. I wanted quite badly to offer to fix that particular problem, but that would have been insanely stupid.

(Sahra told me much, much later that everything _else_ I’d done that night was insanely stupid so why stop there, but she would say that.)

“Have a good evening, Sergeant Grant,” Nightingale said, before I could say anything else, and then both of them were gone – out the door I’d entered by.

I took a couple of deep breaths, let them out again, and rang in, because Stephanopoulos was probably wondering what the hell was going on.

“They’ve left,” I said. “But there’s no point me doing this again; they know who I am and who I’m working for.”

Stephanopoulos swore, inventively. “They just came out and told you?”

“Point-blank.”

“Anything else?”

And then I did, if you’re keeping count, the second most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life.

“No, boss,” I said. “They talked in circles, but nothing else useful. I don’t really know why they were there to start with.”

When they – we, dammit – when we checked the CCTV footage, it’d show me going into the storage room and them following, but there hadn’t been any cameras in the room itself. I’d checked. Twice. You tend to do that when having career-endangering sex with people you’re supposed to be running surveillance on.

Besides, even if I had – I did think about coming out with it, but _I_ wouldn’t have believed me. Stephanopoulos definitely wouldn’t have. It was too ridiculous to be believable.

I was pretty sure that had been part of the plan, if there’d been a plan.

Stephanopoulos sighed. “Right, then; you might as well call it a night.”

We said our goodbyes and I put my phone in my pocket and tried not to think about what I’d just done, because, because –

– there was a leak in our unit, I’d had it confirmed, and until I knew what was going on there I couldn’t trust anybody. And I hadn’t lied. That was very important. And then I went home and absolutely did not fantasise about what had just happened, in any way.

All I had for a while was fantasy, because I didn’t see either Beverley or Nightingale for a month after that, but – well. That’s a story for another time.  

**Author's Note:**

> sadly right now this is not a prequel to anything, but if it WAS it would be to the Leverage-esque AU I may or may not one day write, because every fandom deserves a good heist AU.


End file.
